


The Measure of a Man

by fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: A Stitch In Time [14]
Category: Legacy of Kain
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raziel visits his newest vassal--and has a 'discussion'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Measure of a Man

It had taken the remainder of the day, the following night, and yet another day before the chaos precipitated by Anani's ill-timed 'rescue' had been, for the moment, settled. And while it was far from the first time Raziel had dealt with a battle's aftermath, it was the only time he could recall in which he was forced to make reparations for being victorious. Despite the Ancients' demeanor--which, for the most part, had been far more gracious and forgiving of the trespasses against them than any of the Razielim had any reason to expect--Raziel could not help but find the entire exercise rather ... galling.

Still, it was done--and with the assistance of Janos, not to mention Shamgar and Zillah, Anani and the other warriors had been well settled within Aptera as they waited for the rest of the clan to make their arrival. Anani had been most insistent that proper sentries be established about the chambers Raziel had been granted; and Raziel found himself little inclined to argue. Still, it had been with a certain amount of relief that he escaped his over-attentive progeny, and made his way to the nearby hall where the Ancient healers plied their trade.

The building, like all others in the Ancient city, was elegant in design, boasting innumerable overlarge windows and archways for the comfort and convenience of a winged race. Unlike the majority of its fellows, however, this structure was more wide than tall, and had several arched doors of the more mundane variety. Raziel presumed this was more for the benefit of the injured and infirm than due to any human influence--and stepping inside, found that his assumption had been correct.

The Ancient--a female, middling of age, with silvered edges upon her wingtips, looked upward at his entrance, and gasped in surprise. "D--divine one!" Her stool fell over with a clatter as she leaped to her feet, and a spreading silence fell over the ward.

"I am here to see the one called Vivec," Raziel said evenly, ignoring the stares and whispers in the background. "That is, if he has not yet been released?"

"...No, I -- that is saying, he...." the female Ancient's accent was thick; she paused, composing herself, hands brushing ineffectually at her reagent-dusted sleeves. The infirmary consisted of a large central chamber, from which radiated three broad hallways. The atrium and one of the corridors were brightly lit by windows both stained and clear, by upper-level entrances, and by ranks of magelights nested into the architecture. The other two passages were dim, and seemed disused, as if the place had once been meant for many more than it now served. Restful meanderings in pale stone and wood were laid into the cut tile floor, the tapestries and murals were mainly patterns, meditative and intricate, flanked by columns fluted or twisted in serpentine helixes. The soft cascade of water sounded, as if a small stream tumbled over stones, not too far distant. The quiet burble was plainly audible in the sudden hush.

Half or more of the Ancients reclining on the padded benches favored by their species, or mutually grooming, or carefully helping one another through weighted excercises to strengthen damaged muscle, were apparently not injured at all. Nearly every bandaged individual was attended by one or, often, two companions -- and sometimes by an Ancient in healer's apparel, as well. To Raziel's eye, the injuries seemed relatively minor; most common were half-healed cuts, usually in neat parallel sets of three. But there was no hostility the Ancients' gazes, despite the manner in which they must have earned those slices -- at least, no hostility from these individuals. There were surely more wounded than just this handful.

"He undergoes treatment," the Ancient finished, searching for words haltingly, selecting them one at a time. "This path, come." Her tone was polite as she gestured Raziel to follow, towards the corridor still in use. Along the hall's either side, curtained arches revealed glimpses of the chambers beyond: comfortable sleeping platforms, shallow bathing pools, Ancients glancing up in surprise or concern, empty niches, the red rippling basins of the bloodfountains.

The last few arches, at the end of the hallway, were filled not by curtains, but by heavy doors. Raziel's guide stopped at one, splayed her hand over the pale wood and paused, then nodded as if satisfied by the unheard response, and pressed open the portal.

Vivec lay facedown upon a waist-high and somewhat T-shaped platform. His wings were spread to full extension; their breadth nearly spanned the width of the room, a blanket of black, from the blue-bronze glossy flight feathers as long as a man's arm to the layered down near his body. A little glazed-eyed, Vivec turned his head at the sound of the opening door, eyes focusing.

At his side, another Ancient looked up from where she folded over a last layer of clean linen bandage, securing a wooden splint firmly against a portion of the wing. The scent of Ancients' blood, musk and cinnamon and sweetness, was in the air. "Yes?" she said, brows drawing together a little in rare irritation.

Raziel inclined his head minutely in subtle apology for his intrusion. "I have come to check upon Vivec's progress in healing." Despite his best efforts, Raziel had oft found himself falling into same mindset as many of his Razielim, viewing the Ancients with a certain ... not disdain, but perhaps pity, at their relative fragility and their inability to heal. In this instance, however, Raziel could not help but have a very visceral appreciation of the unique difficulties posed by injured wings--and how often such pinions were targeted by one's enemies in battle.

"How long will it be until he is whole?" Raziel asked, addressing himself to both patient and healer. The pain of his own remembered injuries made the question less peremptory than it otherwise might have been, and assisted him in ignoring the tempting bloodsmell that still lingered in the air.

"How long? It will take however long required for spiral fracture of both radius and ulna to completely mineralize, which itself depends on whether *I* have set all the bone fragments correctly," the younger, second healer finished the splint wrap and, pressing her patient's wing closed, began to bind that immobile as well, "and whether *he* can keep from displacing them. Again. Stop tha-- _basi, arretes tsopano,_ Vivec!"

The guardsman growled a terse reply in the same tongue. His good wing flailed, feathers shushing against stone and disordering scrolls in the stiff breeze, as he endeavored to rise. "Divine One," he said, then looked beyond Raziel, to where the alchemical healer stood behind him, looking both awed and nervous. "You -- where is your retinue?"

Raziel's eyebrows rose, both at the healer's snappish tone and at Vivec's question. It seemed his latest vassal was far more inclined to question his lord than Gana had been thus far ...

"They are where they should be," Raziel answered mildly, disinclined to take offense--for now, at least. "I hardly need heralds and courtiers to announce my presence to the world ... especially when I all I intend is to visit a sickroom." He tilted his head, stepping closer to scrutinize the newly-bound injury. "The break was not clean, then?" he asked the cantankerous healer.

There were lines around the healer's eyes, her skin was faintly grayish -- perhaps signs of fatigue among her kind, for Janos had evidenced the same, several days ago. Still, she glanced up from her task, a spark of interest in her look. "No, it was not. It might have been, for flightbones are quite elastic, quite ductile, particularly in the extremities," she gestured towards a portion of Vivec's whole wing, seeming to enjoy offering the explanation, "but Vivec has suffered other breaks previously, which tend to..."

"A herald, sent ahead, would ensure that those with whom you would speak are not otherwise engaged," said Vivec crossly, jerking his injured wing out from under the healer's hand, the bindings still trailing tails of white linen as he levered himself to his knees on the stone platform. "But no, I referred to sorcerers, other guards, Even your Fallen. Where does she cower now? Their presence could have kept you from falling prey to...." he started to swing a leg down, nearly overbalanced.

The healer's expression had closed down. "You will stay where I put you, or by the Elder God, I will _mettre'a man'wala pawamba kos lankula...._ "

Raziel's gaze grew flinty. "I assume by 'fallen', you mean Gana?" His voice was still even; but had acquired a razored edge. "She does still possess a name, to my knowledge. Unless by entering my service, she has fallen so low as to no longer be allowed the use of it?"

"What? No. She is Fallen -- you called it 'bloodrage.' For the last hand of decades, those like her have been slain by spear, denied the Reaver's embrace, and you --"

The healer seized a leather strap of the arms-harness Vivec wore, and used a moment of his imbalance to attempt to drag him back down. She eyed Raziel sourly. "You could make yourself useful." She was well and intimately aware of the unearthly strength these foreigners possessed, having spent the last fiveday dealing with the consequences of that strength, counted in bones and joints and blood.

The jolt didn't seem to much dismay Vivec; he was more powerfully built than common for Ancients, and even half-dazed, outmatched the slender healer. "Does she now neglect her duties from cowardice, or further weakness? Or do you forbid her from the purpose she must serve? And what of the other mages who...."

"Enough," Raziel growled. His patience somewhat eroded by Vivec's accusations, he placed a taloned hand upon the Ancient's uninjured shoulder and with effortless ease, forced Vivec prone once more, despite the other man's vain attempts to rise. "She does not attend me because I do not require it. Regardless of what you may think, I am hardly some puling weakling." Giving a brief nod to the healer, he did not move from his position, keeping Vivec pinned.

Returning his gaze to Vivec's indignant face, Raziel continued, "This is hardly the first assassination attempt I have survived, and I have little doubt that it shall not be the last. In this, Gana's usefulness to me lies deeper than the strength of her arms; and so does yours." With the arrival of his Razielim to this era, Raziel now had warriors aplenty. He paused, waiting to see if Vivec retained the wit to realize the truth that lay behind his words.

Holding an Ancient pinned was in some ways more difficult than doing the same to a human; the Ancient was manifestly stronger, though still not equal to even a young Razielim. Yet there was a curiously fragile feel to the body underhand, as if silken skin and warm muscle covered hollow bones. And the Ancient was warm, feverishly so against Raziel's cool palm, Vivec's heat like that of a bird or a small creature, thickly furred.

The healer nodded with some approval. She gestured to the elder apothecarist, and the older female Ancient departed, closing the door behind her, cutting out the sounds of other activity in the infirmary, and turned her attention to the damaged wing. She made a short, unhappy noise at the state of the bandage and placement of the splint, and began unwrapping the place once again, ignoring Vivec's indignant agitation.

"You speak so cavalierly of assassination, Chosen. We have no word for it in our tongue -- for to slay another, one of our own... it is unthinkable. It *was* unthinkable. But where we had no word, the Hylden had seven; if it is they behind your malaise, it will not stop at this; they will learn and adapt in ways you cannot begin to imagine --" The healer pulled the splint free and Vivec hissed with pain, apparently losing the thread of his thought. His pupils, Raziel could see, were unnaturally dilated. Vivec's eyes abruptly narrowed, his expression one of suspicion and anger both. "Usefulness? What mean you?"

Hmm--it seemed that Vivec's unconsidered truthfulness might be due to more than the Ancient's combative nature. Still, it served to keep the Ancient distracted--and Raziel might very well gain some new information in allowing it to continue, regardless of the affront to his dignity.

"Think on it, Vivec," Raziel said, maintaining his calm against the spur of the Ancient's anger. "Our differences are obvious." He looked downward, gazing thoughtfully at the ivory-pale talons splayed in stark contrast against azure flesh and ebony feathers. "What do you know of my kind? Little, I would wager--and I even less of yours. The existence of our two races was previously separated by millennia; now, we must coexist. Already there have been mistakes made, albeit through ignorance rather than malice; such misunderstandings can quickly sour into resentment and enmity."

He paused, well aware of the healer's listening ears. "I must learn what I can of the Ancients, and swiftly, if I wish my Clan to thrive in this era. And while Janos' and the other Guardians assistance has been invaluable, their concerns are, of necessity, somewhat ... lofty." Raziel met Vivec's angry golden gaze once more. "Gana, however, is not burdened by such preoccupations."

Vivec pushed up against Raziel's weight; the brief struggle gained him nothing but a severe glance from the healer. She wet the last sheet of gauze with a cup of solution that smelled salty, and then peeled the thin layer away, exposing a patch of wing sheared of feathers. Bare, the flesh was as blue as the rest of Vivec's body, but more fragile, a little wrinkled over the angularities of sinew and bone. It was seamed with a purpled line, where it seemed an incision had been made. "Your fallen will answer faithfully any question you put to her, will obey any command -- she would do so even if not beholden to your service. Janos names you Chosen, and so must all adherents of the faith believe." He tried to draw his wing in a little more, aborted the motion with a thin sound as the healer probed at the swollen place. "What need you of myself?"

Raziel gave him a sardonic look. "And your people's beliefs--their thoughts and their aspirations, their customs and expectations--they are all so easily explained, then? You would trust the teaching of such to Gana alone? Are the Ancients truly such simple creatures?" He watched the healer's ministrations with idle interest, noting her skill at manipulating the injured wing. While his own pinions were jointed far differently, not to mention featherless--there might be useful lessons to be learned here.

"I wish to learn what you believe," Raziel finally said, when it became obvious that only blunt honesty would serve. "What are your expectations of me--and of the world? I wish to learn of this age through the eyes of those that were born to it, who fought the Hylden and suffered the curse."

Vivec laughed shortly, a sound somewhat choked as the healer palpitated the injured portion of his wing carefully. "What I believe, or what our kind believes? If the former, I cannot enlighten you a great deal. My own faith is not the thing it once was." Vivec paused, swallowed, as if the admission were not easy -- or perhaps his wound simply pained him. "As for the latter... it is said that when you take up the Reaver, the thread of history will part upon its edge, that the crimes of the past will be undone, that God's touch will return to the world and that our curse will evaporate like morning dew. Unbalancing elements will be eliminated." Vivec pursed his lips to make sharp clicking sound -- Raziel had heard other Ancients issue similar, though not frequently -- that seemed to indicate disdain or disbelief. The healer eyed Vivec severely, before turning to place a clean sheet of gauze and then rewrap the splint.

So it was Kain the Ancients truly waited for, then, and not himself. For Raziel knew full well that despite any power he might gain, he was no Pillar Guardian. There could only be one Scion of Balance, just as there would only ever be one soul to inhabit the Reaver, both of them locked into roles decreed millennia before either of them ever were to be born.

"Who has delivered this prophecy?" Raziel asked thoughtfully. "Some manner of oracle, or priest?" Or perhaps their 'god' itself, masquerading as its own prophet? "Do all Ancients believe in it, then? There is no dissension?" If so, that would make them different from the humans in more than just appearance, for Raziel had never known any pronouncement, whether divine or secular, to remain unchallenged by dissent.

Vivec laid his forehead momentarily on the padded table, his breathing heavy as he rested from his efforts against Raziel. The action of his lungs was a hot friction under the pale vampire's palm. "No prophesy this -- but rather a vision, witnessed by many, in the Guardian's timepools." He neither protested nor struggled, this time, as the healer folded closed his wing and bound it. "Of course there are variances in belief. The visions were not clear, and some were burdened with mutual contradictions," he frowned, perhaps thinking on one image in particular: that of the Divine One, blue-skinned and black-winged, crowned in thorns, the Reaver proudly in hand. But then, Raziel and his kin were rumored to change with time.... "But those bereft of any belief at all... did not live long past the cursing. For what had they left to hope for?"

The healer, finishing with the last linen knots, glanced over her shelves of supplies. She frowned, idly reached back to smooth her hand down her own disarrayed feathers. "I am going to retrieve more bonemend," she told Vivec, tone stern, as she reached for the door, "do not wander off again." She fixed Raziel with a meaningful glance.

No sooner had the door closed behind her, when Vivec, with startling flexibility and deceptive strength, attempted to twist out from under Raziel's talons.

Unsurprised at Vivec's sudden heave, Raziel growled a bit under his breath, a second hand joining the first in holding the Ancient upon his sickbed. Splayed low over that back, near the line of the spine where the main joint of Raziel's own wings would have been, his talons were very white against the darkness of azure skin and ebon feathers.

"Enough--you heard the healer. Are your wings so devoid of value to you that you would risk them thus?" he snapped, a surge of memory making his voice harsher than perhaps was strictly warranted.

"Nyla's profession is overcautiousness," Vivec maintained, craning his neck back for a better view of where Raziel stood. His leather-soft talons flexed against the table for purchase. Rather than arising from a sectioned central plate, the Ancient's wings were quite birdlike, joined with cabled tendons to each inhumanly-molded shoulder blade. The actual joints were difficult to distinguish beneath thick-layered downy feathers, but Raziel had once seen them in their entirety, when fighting the spirit-skeletal remnants of the pillar guardians. For all its arched elegance, the underlying structure had seemed powerfully built. With the raspy sound of feather barbs rubbing, Vivec angled his good wing, angling it, half-folding, bronze-black pinions stiff against Raziel's forearm. "And of what *value* are tools unused?" Without further warning, the warrior punched out with the coiled limb, driving a hard blow against the center of the pale vampire's chest, thick feathers momentarily blinding.

Unused to the concept of a fighting style that included one's wings as weapons, Raziel was caught off guard. Even under the blow, he could have held on; but only at the cost of sinking his talons deep into Vivec's flesh. As it was, he was forced to release his hold and stagger backwards, and in that same moment, Vivec seized his opportunity, lunging upwards and off the table.

"*Tools*?" Raziel snarled, smarting from the humiliation of being caught off-guard by such a petty blow. "Is that all they are to you, then? Of no more value than a sword or a maul, and just as easily discarded?" How could an Ancient, born to his wings, speak so easily of giving up the sky? He could not understand it, and the visceral memory of his own mutilated flesh made his skin crawl at the thought. "You know *nothing* of which you speak!"

Free and upright, clearly believing the platform between them a barrier to Raziel's advance, Vivec paused in the act of stretching luxuriously. His legs were numb and he was unsteady, and he clearly favored his broken wing, angling it gingerly and making no effort to unbind it. He frowned. "And you are too quick to assumption. Flight is of inestimable value; without wings, I too would soon beg for the Reaver's release. But they are tools, as are my hands, and my mind. I -- all of us -- work towards the hope you are meant to represent!" The Ancient's tone was confused, not accusing.

And what will you do when decades, when centuries pass, and that hope never materializes? The words remained unspoken, despite the potent temptation to do otherwise--for Raziel already knew the answer. In spite of the immortality forced upon them, the Ancients would die--would *choose* to die--until nothing remained of them except for a handful of tumbled ruins and half-remembered campfire tales--and the Pillars.

And into that world, Kain would be born, the Scion of Balance ... and prophesied messiah of a vampire race that had been extinct for millennia.

How did one explain such future-knowledge? To choose to take from the Ancients the last vestige of hope that remained to them--that somehow they could still be redeemed from their Curse? Was it a false mercy to allow them to continue thus in ignorance ... or cruel arrogance to presume that he, even as their 'messiah', had any right to reveal what he knew of the ages to come?

"And yet--I am not what you expected, am I?" Raziel challenged the dazed Ancient, frustration and anger sharpening his words. "You call Gana 'Fallen'--if I were not your 'Chosen One', would I not be considered the same?" To glory in one's immortality, in the hunt and in one's existence as a vampire--how could he be messiah to a people who despised everything he was?

Vivec's clenched his soft-leather talons, so different from a Kainite's. "What I expected is irrelevant. And of course you would not be fallen -- our kinship is in the curse you bear, not betwixt our species." The Ancient most admirably kept distaste from his expression, but his tone betrayed a hint of it. "In any case, you have never fallen to this 'bloodrage', to the animal madness."

Raziel gave a short bark of scornful laughter. "Oh I have not, have I?" Letting temper rule him for a moment, he vaulted across the low table separating them in a single instant of pure speed, stopping only when he was almost nose to nose with the injured Ancient. "I have lived for over a thousand years, Vivec, and almost all that time has been spent upon the battlefield. I have succumbed to bloodrage more times than I can remember--and that madness has allowed me to survive and protect what is mine." If Vivec thought to remain upon his lofty ideals and condemn what the Razielim--and every Kainite vampire--had done to survive, then Raziel might need to reconsider the need for his service.

The Ancient gasped, jolted back -- Raziel's speed was like nothing he'd ever encountered. No sprite or swift could move so fast or so agilely, and they were a fraction of the other vampire's mass. Battle-hardened nerves kept him from stumbling, but it was a near thing. "What? -- " a thousand years? Nigh eight times the span of years held by the eldest of Ancients? An inkling began to form, a notion of what service to Raziel might entail. "It... cannot be. The rage is the cruelest, the most damaging, aspect of Hylden's curse. If... if it were otherwise..." Vivec shook his head, as if to cast away the very idea, "...then those I have slain...." he swallowed, fell silent.

"The past is, for the most part, immutable. You did what was needful at a time when your people were overwhelmed, and had no recourse against the bloodrage. I will not shame you for that. But to continue as executioner now, when it may no longer be needed, and when your people have lost so many ... that to me seems like the height of blasphemy." Raziel's face did not soften; but there was perhaps a note of understanding in his words. For had he also not been assured of righteousness? First as a Sarafan, then as a vampire--and finally, in pursuit of his vengeance--only to be proven wrong time and time again?

He regarded Vivec evenly. "Has it not occurred to you that perhaps this is a thing I have come to change?" A poor messiah he might be--but if he could change this for the Ancients, then at least he would not be a wholly useless one.

Vivec opened his mouth, closed it, shocked silent. He rocked back a little, posture abruptly less aggressive, expression gradually betraying what might have been a hint of hope. Perhaps, embattled and embittered, absorbed with the status quo, he'd not in fact imagined an alternative at all. "I... but you..." Vivec shook his head, had to take a moment to regain his balance, as the motion seemed to dizzy him. "I am far from the only... executioner among us. Even if... if you were to permit me this... there are tens of thousands of our people still flying these skies, over vast areas. You... surely even you cannot be everywhere at once." Vivec was abruptly uncertain if that was the truth. For had not Raziel, unseen, somehow passed and arrived at the fallen one's side before Vivec?

"This is true, I will admit--even I have not yet mastered the ability to be everywhere at once," Raziel replied drily. "That does not mean I and my clan cannot try to teach what we know in the hopes of alleviating your people's burden. Or do you truly believe that you are the only executioner who would welcome a respite from his duties?"

Vivec eyed Raziel with some incredulity. "Of course I am not the only one. There will be hundreds, perhaps a thousand -- all who are called to the most terrible service, and likely others as well." He paused, attempting to think on the logistics, a task made more difficult by the cotton that seemed to have lodged in his head. Some needs must stay while others learned.... And exactly what authority did Vivec now have to command his former brethren? But for a prize such as this, all obstacles would be surmounted; they had to be. "It shall be done. Will the first of us be taught tomorrow? How many at once?"

"Tomorrow?" Raziel echoed, caught off guard by Vivec's sudden enthusiasm. He blinked, the last of his anger fading into a tired kind of exasperation. "No--such matters will require more time and consideration." Not the least of which would be how his Razielim were to deal with maddened vampires capable of launching attacks from the air. Perhaps if a clan elder worked in tandem with one or more Ancients ... Setting aside the thought for later, Raziel added, "As do your injuries. As things stand, your recovery will be essential if you wish to undertake such a task."

Disappointment and doubt flickered across Vivec's face, and Raziel hastened to reassure him. "This matter is not a small one to me, Vivec." He glanced away, through the archways that led to the empty rooms beyond. "I cannot command that your people live--but in this, at least, I can prevent others from ordering them to die."

Vivec frowned a little, hugged his free wing tighter to his body. "I am sufficiently recovered for such training," he maintained, tone confident not with the bravado of a stripling, but the assurance of a seasoned warrior. The possibility of learning how to effect the cure for the blood madness -- and thereby spare himself and others from the shame of being the executing hand -- could not be abandoned lightly.

"Considering you do not yet know what such lessoning might entail, I find that difficult to believe," Raziel replied sardonically. The words were challenge as much as denial--if Vivec's frustration with Raziel's recalcitrance spurred him to do all he could to recover swiftly, it could not help but benefit them both. "For the moment, I would be best served if you bent your thoughts in the direction of stratagems. Razielim elders do not yet have the power of flight--yet their assistance will be necessary in this endeavor. What methods would be necessary for one to restrain a maddened Ancient from taking to wing to escape their ministrations?"

As if in unconscious sympathy with the plight of the wingless Razielim -- or perhaps that of the ancients who were to be denied the air -- Vivec spread his free wing slightly, the feathers cupping. The movement was quite slight, but the plane of those overlapping dark feathers stirred a breeze in the narrow, vaulted space. "I presume you mean methods other than those of mankind or Hylden," he said. Those tended towards lethality, after all, and Raziel could perfectly well observe or research those on his own. Vivec tilted his head slightly, thinking on the kinds of injuries his fellow Ancients bore, on what he had seen of Raziel's efforts against his own fallen guardian.

Vivec glanced upwards, seemed to consider. "The question, I think, is more complex than merely how to prevent flight. For nets or small stunning bolts or even the temptation of blood can bring down any flier eventually -- unless it employs magical defenses, which the Fallen assuredly do." Gana's case had been a unique one, as the Hylden zone had prevented the functioning of more wholesome mageries. Under normal circumstances, Vivec and his counterpart would have shielded themselves, the fallen would have done the same upon spotting them, and the ensuing battle would have been very lengthy indeed. "The making of such shields is known to nearly all, and is difficult to penetrate; nearly impossible to, without like magics." Vivec turned slightly, in profile, and his body subtly tensed. "The magics take several moments to raise, and also a small space clear of other sentient beings. Disrupting the shield before it arises will be necessary, I think, for..."

And in a swift flurry of feathers, the Ancient leapt to a broad-windowed ledge near the ribbed ceiling, the backdraft of his hard-beating wing swirling scrolls, overturning vials. The jump was inelegant, awkward and skewed, but Vivec caught the edge of the platform with a taloned hand and the wrist-joint of his good wing -- employing the limb in a manner that might have seemed shockingly casual, albeit effective -- and swung himself up. He steadied himself, knelt on the edge, looked down upon Raziel. He lifted a hand, digits tracing a simple-seeming rune in the air. "For once a fallen has erected a force barrier, the creature may rain down devastation with impun...."

Raziel had taken in Vivec's leap with no outward reaction other than the tilt of his head and an intrigued lift of an eyebrow. But as the Ancient began to summon his magics, he moved--

\--and almost before Vivec could register the *crack* of Raziel's wings against the air, the elder vampire was upon him, one taloned hand sunk into the stone wall to steady him upon his narrow perch, the razored edge of the other pressed up against that blue-skinned throat in silent warning.

"Then it will behoove us not to allow them the opportunity to do so," Raziel purred, close enough that his breath stirred the dark feathered edges of the hair that curled behind one ear. For all the threat implicit in Raziel's talons at his throat, however, there was no anger in it. Instead there was a dark amusement, and a challenge, in those soft words ....

The air between the two winged creatures seemed to thicken, momentarily, but the Ancients' shield did not materialize. Instead, the feel of the nascent magics unravelling was a tangible shiver, an unspooling of lightning and blue, centered somewhere around Raziel's upper arm and lapping a warm prickling over his face and throat. It had the feel to it of shields Kain once employed in battle, shell-hard force barriers that excluded physical harm --for a time. This particular shield, destabilized as it was, would clearly do nothing of the sort.

Vivec's eyes were wide, and he swallowed... carefully, skin tender under the edges of Raziel's talons. He'd seen Raziel move rapidly before, several times, but repetition made the feat no less shocking. "So... I did not imagine it before," he said slowly, making no effort to escape for the moment, though his heart beat a rapid pulse under Raziel's palm. "Are all your kind so fast, or is it a time-warping you employ?"

The thrum of Vivec's heartbeat and the flushed heat of his skin were a potent siren's call, a tantalizing promise of the blood that pulsed so achingly near .... Had Raziel been a lesser creature, it might have been a temptation too potent to resist. As it was, it added a heady edge to the nascent violence that hung in the air ....

"It is one of the gifts that comes with age. Even fledges are far swifter than any human--and elders are far more potent than any fledge," Raziel replied, his voice dark and edged with humor at Vivec's startlement. "It is one of the reasons why only elders would be able to undertake the calming of the bloodrage." Though not, however, the only reason. The bonds of blood were just as crucial when dealing with an enraged vampire, the obedience a Sire could command of his offspring. The Ancients would have no such ties; unless the Razielim or the Ancient sorcerers could somehow recreate them.

Raziel's exhaled breath was cool against the Ancient's skin, made him shiver just slightly. "Gif--" Started Vivec, in his tone astonishment and skepticism both, but cut off sharply as his small movement caused the serrated cutting edges of Raziel's talons to scrape against his skin. The tough chitin drew a pale line that slowly beaded red, like the sketched suggestion of a ruby necklace. The Anceint frowned, focused on his task at hand. "Yet I know not if speed alone would prove sufficient," he said, holding quite still. "The enmaddened are neglectful of their own welfare. Even in such a situation as this, the creature would contine the assault. They prefer to cause cutting injuries. A geomancer, such as Gana, might summon blades from surrounding stone surfaces, thusly --" he lifted his free hand.

The granite under Raziel's hand seemed to ripple in response, disturbingly alive.

Some of the good humor in Raziel's face faded, replaced with a slight consternation. "Maddened Ancients are still capable of such complex mageries?" Kainite vampires generally devolved to the most basic of stratagems, and little more--they would use any weapons that came to hand in their quest for blood and death, but none had ever managed to muster the focused will that was required for spellcasting in such a state. But if Vivec spoke truth ... then the task Raziel had set before them was far more difficult than he had thought.

A stone shard, brutally sharpened to a point, thrust outward from the wall, and Raziel jerked his gripping hand away with a startled hiss as stone screeched against chitin. His talons were perhaps the most armored portion of his body, and such a glancing blow could not penetrate--but the same could not be said for the rest of him!

"These magics are hardly complex," Vivec maintained, though his tone was considerably less arched than it might have been -- the grip around his throat ensured that much. The leather-skinned talons of his free hand closed hesitantly over Raziel's wrist. Vivec might as well have been endeavoring against an equally thick steel cable, for all that Raziel seemed to notice. "Not for those specializing in such fields. The Fallen do not seem to strategize or plan, they never work together, they are easily tempted and distracted -- but they do use the tools with which they were most practiced." Perhaps Vivec was not equally so abled, for the shard he'd summoned began to crumble within moments of its emergence, leaving Raziel's talons dusted with stone flakes and powder. Gana's spellworks in stone, by contrast, had always been long-persisting. The ledge, upon which Raziel knelt, began to warp.

With an aggravated snarl, Raziel shifted his grip from neck to waist--then leapt into the air as his former perch erupted into a multitude of needled spikes. Such a tactic would only delay such an attack, not counter it--yet he saw little other choice, hampered by his own unwillingness to harm his vassal further, even in a mock battle such as this. Ancients were far too fragile to endure the punishment that the Razielim meted out to each other as a matter of course.

Keeping Vivec pinned to his side, even though the man's great wings made such handling more awkward than he would have liked, Raziel landed upon a wooden tabletop on the main floor below, scattering clay flasks and other oddments as he backwinged to avoid any contact with the stone shelves or walls nearby. "If the Fallen are still capable of some magics, what of others to counter them? Are there any spells that will stun or incapacitate without permanent harm?" His eyes fell upon the neat rows of unguents and other potions required for the herbalists' art. "Or if magic against magic is not sufficient, what of more stealthy means? Will they succumb to any soporific or paralytic brews?"

"Oomph!" Vivec's gasp was of startlement, not pain, as he was taken up as easily as the Ancient himself might have lifted a child. His good wing flailed out reflexively, as if to ward against a fall which did not come. Instead, Vivec found himself placed -- not quite gently, but with a very precise kind of care -- flat on his back upon an inert surface. Raziel knelt over him -- a wise precaution, for though very experienced stone-workers could perhaps call up blades through the thin intervening layer of wood, they were not likely to do so through their own bodies.

Spilled powders and potions cast a mosaic across the floortiles. Vivec set himself awkwardly to closing his good wing, feathers scraping through the spillage as he folded the limb underneath him. "Poisons? No." Vivec paused, corrected himself. "Rather, I do not know. Perhaps. Fewer elixirs affect us now, after the curse, but... I will consult the healers." Vivec frowned. "Of course there exist countering spells: a great many of them. It is in those arts which I, and most executioners, are most versed. Do you mean to say...." The Ancient trailed off, seeming unsure. While he knew that most Razielim did not evidence a great deal of magical inclination, the notion that the most powerful among them -- the Divine One, no less -- might lack entire classes of ability... was simply outlandish.

"Does it surprise you that I do not know these spells of which you speak?" Raziel said with a considering tilt of his head. The Ancients' knowledge of magic was truly formidable, as evidenced the by ease at which Vivec spoke of cantrips long-lost by the time of the Empire. "The shielding spell is known only to those most skilled among us--and counterspells, if they truly ever existed, have long since been forgotten in the intervening millennia." He paused, gauging Vivec's reaction. "Much will be lost, once there are no Ancients left to teach."

Vivec gritted his teeth with frustration, doggedly clinging to the point. "We have left -- are leaving -- record aplenty of our knowledge; any more would doubtless fall into the grasping hands of humans, and you surely cannot wish for that. More relevantly, you think to subdue the Fallen without contermagic of any sort?" Raziel's talons scraped and caught against the Ancient's skin, raising faint purpled lines, as Vivec drew breath, thinking. Without magery, a fighter would have to be preternaturally fast, and strong, and clever. That Raziel was the first two could not be doubted. The fact that he knew enough -- guessed enough -- to employ a different element against an elemental mage hinted of the latter. Still. "Verily, then. What will your brethren do against a fallen druidic caster? One who might summon against you the beasts of the fields..." Vivec hesitated, as if seeking something and failing to find it, "...or the deep-welling seeps?"

This time, the result of the Ancient's minor spellwork was immediate. At the head of the wooden tabletop, a large clay basin, linked to the tile floor via a wrist-thick metal rod and half-filled with clean water, gurgled and began to violently overflow.

Raziel glanced over at the basin, but other than the lift of a sardonic eyebrow, made no other move to defend against Vivec's latest stratagem. Unlike most other Kainite vampires, he had little need to fear water--though he saw little need to enlighten Vivec as to that fact.

"Why would I require your knowledge of such things, if I thought this could be done without magic?" Raziel snapped, his patience wearing thin. "Have I not already stated that it shall take your kindred as well as mine if we are to succeed?" He shrugged a little, glancing down over Vivec's slighter form, gauging strength and weakness in equal measure. "In truth, it would be far easier to kill such a creature. But the easier path is not always the correct one."

"Easy? Hmmph." Vivec blew out his breath in exasperation. "Of course you shall have whatsoever assistance we can provide. My doubt, however, is whether you or yours can endure combat long enough to perform whatever ritual or --" Vivec gestured helplessly "-- calming rite with which you claim so much practice." The Ancient shivered as rivulets of water wet the back of his robe. The overflow onto the floor and table was a steady stream, now, turning the spilled powders and potions into a swirled morass of color that hissed and glinted against the tiles.

"Endure?" Raziel bridled at the implied insult to himself and his clan, lips drawing back from fangs in an involuntary snarl. He leaned downward, until he was close enough to feel the moist heat of Vivec's panted breaths, taloned hands splayed against wet wood, adulterated powders and potions sparking against armored skin. "If you believe nothing else, Vivec, believe me in this: you have *no* idea what we can endure." The words were soft, yet hard as steel. The Razielim were the lions of the Empire--they had fought against Sarafan, against the Clans, against the Hylden. To battle both night and day without rest, until the field was won ... this was what they were *made* for.

Whether such warriors could abstain from killing for long, even at their Lord's command, remained to be seen. But Raziel would not see their courage questioned!

The Ancient studied the aggressive expression, but did not shrink beneath it, as any rational creature should have. "Very well. Your determination, and theirs, is unquestionable. This much, I have heard and seen for myself." According to those Ancients who had blocked the Razielim's passage -- even for a moment -- when the pale vampires sought their fallen lord, that determination was not so much 'unquestionable' as 'terrifying.' "Yet if you truly plan to commit forces to the redemption of our fallen... should you not have forewarning of the dangers besetting the task?"

Vivec poked a suede-covered talon at Raziel's chest. "I know not even what you require for your ritual. Space? Relative quiet? If so, then combating darkmages...." The shadowed corners of the room whispered, fragmented, drew breath.

"There is no ritual." Raziel drew an exasperated breath, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck lifting as the prickling cold of darkmagic became manifest. Glancing at the shadowy constructs, he kept the main portion of his attentions upon Vivec. "And while a blood-maddened vampire of my era might be less inclined towards magic, I assure you that they are no less dangerous for it." Especially if their Sire or other close blood-kin were not at hand ... There had been times, infrequent but not unknown, where there had been neither time nor ability to control a raging Razielim. In such cases, an elder vampire was no longer a savior--but an executioner.

What could not be saved, must be destroyed.

"The method of it ... is difficult to describe," Raziel continued, even as he watched the shadow-creature's approach from the corner of his eye. "It is--the call of blood to blood, of power to like. Think of it as the call of one's name by a liege, or ... a parent. Ingrained instinct will oft require a creature heed its sire or dam over any mortal danger or immortal fury. So it is with us as well. Any Razielim who falls to the bloodrage still has the blood and power of their progenitor within them--my power. If I call, they must answer--and only the truly lost will not heed my commands." He hesitated. "Gana--was more difficult. The ties between us were far too tenuous to forge a link; which is why I allowed her to attack, and drink deep of my blood."

The shadowy summon was far from silent: in the sound of its formation and approach was a hint of the void, a ultra-audible howl that seemed to settle in the bones. Vivec glanced between Raziel and the creature, his worry gradually, but visibly, increasing. "Then... this method..." Vivec winced as the shade lifted the darksome hint of talons, tenuous as brushstrokes and tenebrous as the night, but real as steel. "You plan to allow -- damnation!" Vivec shoved at Raziel's weight, trying to push him away from the attacking thing, and twisted in an attempt to wriggle free, reaching for the spear that leaned against the far wall.

Raziel glanced over his shoulder at the menacing shade, ignoring Vivec's struggles. The creature lunged forward, talons reaching out to rend and tear--and he straightened, evading that first clumsy strike only to lash out with one of his own. The wraithblade sprang to life with a hungry keen, and between one moment and the next, the shadow-wraith dissolved into nothingness with a fading howl as the electric-blue spectral blade sliced it apart. The second creature showed no signs of hesitation at the death of its fellow, and this proved its undoing--twisting, Raziel lunged forward upon bended knee to sink the wraithblade deep into the thing's torso.

The second shadow-wraith shredded apart with a wail ... and then they were alone once more. Raziel looked downward at Vivec, his face and form cast in sharp relief by the icy light of the wraithblade. "Please continue."

Vivec made a short, sharp noise, something close to 'ack'. His eyes traveled between the hungry coils of light -- the sensation of vast powers, perhaps endless, and summoned so very easily -- and Raziel's insouciant countenance. Vivec was no artificer, to know one enchantment from another merely by the magical imprint of it... and yet the ghostly, lightning-crackling blade seemed like a soul-powered weapon, stripped of its cocoon of steel. And that... that was impossible.

The Ancient swallowed, searching for his prior thread of attention. "...then you intend to permit a Fallen... to attack you? To feed from you? You would suffer again the mutilation that Gana inflicted upon you -- and your brethren would do the same?" He shook his head, and there was equal amazement to the gesture as when he looked upon the Wraithblade. "What, then, of those Fallen who cannot 'safely' be permitted even to approach? The firecasters, for instance, who oft self-immolate...."

"Firecasters would be a problem, I will admit," Raziel said drily. "One presumes throwing a bucket of water upon them will not work?" Dismissing the wraithblade, since the immediate threat had been dealt with, he sat back upon his heels, trailing talon-tips thoughtfully through the puddled water on the tabletop. "It is a shame we cannot sever them from their magic for a time. It would be most useful ...."

"I believe that depends on the size of your bucket," Vivec admitted, plucking at the loose silk hem, thoroughly sodden, of his short jacket-like garment. Sizzling ember-red sparks danced across his hands and exposed skin, but were swiftly extinguished by the wet and humidity. "And the strength of your caster." He sighed, rearranged his wings, propped himself up on his elbows. "The Hylden could summon magic-nullifying fields, some of which even concerted effort by our best could not break. I know nothing of these techniques, however." His mouth was tight at mention of that old enemy.

"Hrm." Raziel filed that away for further consideration. Oberon, he knew, had no such qualms about using--or researching--such magic, regardless of its origins. Perhaps the Ancients could be persuaded to see the benefit in using their enemies' tactics for their own benefit ....

Regardless, it was hardly a battle that needed to be fought here and now; a fact brought home by the healer's sudden and unnannounced return.

"Divine One, I have--" she stopped short, gaping a little at the shambles of her formerly immaculate ward. Some few walls still sprouted stony protrusions, slowly sinking out of sight ... but nothing could disguise the havoc wreaked upon floors and tables alike, or the puddled water pooling in depressions upon the stone floor, still sparking and wreathed with multicolored vapors.

Silence reigned for a long, long moment. Then a sharp-sided chip of stone detached itself from the overhead ledge and clattered down, striking the room's singular -- and sole -- still-upright glass vial as it went. The rolling vial scattered a few scrolls onto the floor and then followed them, smashing its contents too over the wildly-colored tiles. The scrolls promptly bleached to a bright, and blank, white. A nearby tapestry, its luxurious tassels brushing the ground, began to corrode rapidly, some combination of chemistry and magic conspiring to convert it to malodorous ash and steam.

The healer stepped back as a puddle, freed by her opening of the heavy door, began to creep into the hallway. She clutched her little bottle of bonemend, as if that might fend off the sight before her.

Beneath Raziel, Vivec coughed, nervously. The flow from the basin diminished, then ceased.

"You..." the sound emerged as a croak. "...you -- what did... I told you to..." the formerly-verbose healer seemed to be experiencing difficulties with the common tongue.

Raziel straightened, stepping off the table as if it had been his intention all along. Over the ages, he had fought innumerable battles, great and small--but even the greatest warrior knew when to retreat. "The healer has returned," he said to Vivec, ignoring Nyla's affronted expression as if it did not exist. "We shall continue this conversation when you are whole."

Walking to the door, he gave the healer a polite nod. "Vivec is here, as you instructed. I trust you will be able to quell further escape attempts without my assistance." There was the barest heartbeat of a pause--then he continued on out the door, and away from the healer's righteous wrath.


End file.
